Floods, drought, war? It must be El Niño again

That’s according to experts, who now expect the global freak weather phenomenon to strike in the next few months.

The first sign, a vast pool of unusually warm water gathering in the eastern tropical Pacific, is clear enough.

If the warming trend continues, it will unleash a chain reaction of extreme events around the world, especially in the Pacific Rim, from flooding to food shortages and faster climate change to an increased risk of armed conflicts.

The US government’s Climate Prediction Center now puts the chances of El Niño, which occurs naturally once or twice a decade, at up to 80 percent this year.